News Reedy Creek Improvement District and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
What do you think they want to do? Continue to receive a considerable number of complaints about how crowded the parks are?

Complaints are only a problem if they start impacting Disney's bottom line.

And they reached that point at Disneyland.. so it's not like the concept is foreign to the company.

They reached that, too, at MK.

Before the pandemic, WDW was actively raising the cost with the intention to reduce the amount of guests at MK. But it seemed they couldn't find the tipping point. And the GSATs were going down because of the feeling of overcrowdedness. And there were operational headaches and increased ops cost. (And yes, WDW's fault for not increasing capacity previously.)

So, when the pandemic forced them into a reservation system so that there could be 'distancing,' the execs were happy to keep it around for as long as they needed. Plus they continue to raise prices and use surge pricing. Cost goes up, and 'discounts' are offered to fill in seasons of low demand. ILL and upscale upcharges round out the pricing tactics.

And I can hear the voices about to yell "And this is killing Disney!!"

And Disney makes more profit quarter after quarter.

Most profitable quarters I've ever seen from a dying company.
 

Dranth

Well-Known Member
Not comparable with what you get at DLR versus what you get at WDW
Sure, but they are essentially the same system so when you said WDW will never have a system like that it seemed off to me because they did. It just didn’t work well for the setup and type of visitors world gets.

Personally I thought it was leaps and bounds better than the waste of money of a system they use now, but enough others felt otherwise.
 

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
They reached that, too, at MK.

Before the pandemic, WDW was actively raising the cost with the intention to reduce the amount of guests at MK. But it seemed they couldn't find the tipping point. And the GSATs were going down because of the feeling of overcrowdedness. And there were operational headaches and increased ops cost. (And yes, WDW's fault for not increasing capacity previously.)

So, when the pandemic forced them into a reservation system so that there could be 'distancing,' the execs were happy to keep it around for as long as they needed. Plus they continue to raise prices and use surge pricing. Cost goes up, and 'discounts' are offered to fill in seasons of low demand. ILL and upscale upcharges round out the pricing tactics.

And I can hear the voices about to yell "And this is killing Disney!!"

And Disney makes more profit quarter after quarter.

Most profitable quarters I've ever seen from a dying company.
Please stop repeating this 🐶💩

…like enough. Bob lied to you…we don’t hold it against you. Time to move on
 

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
The good news for Disney is that the US continues to make more wealthy people.

In 2016 there were 8,774 households earning $250K+ annually.
In 2023 there were 19,040 such households, an increase of 117%.

Setting aside inflation, regional living expense differences, etc, for a minute: $250K/year in 2023 was objectively enough money to afford a multi-day, on-site Disney World vacation.

So I think they'll continue to do a couple of things:
  • Continue developing products that address the idea of "spend money to save time" trade-off
  • Re-develop existing lands and attractions for Lightning Lane, rather than add completely new
    • (I think that saves long-term OpEx.)
  • Most new builds will be DVC and continue to convert existing inventory to DVC.
    • I'd be surprised if new DVC builds aren't in the very best locations around property.
I could be wrong.

ETA: Cite for data
Those numbers seem terribly low

19,900 households earning more than $250,000?

Is that what you meant?

Gotta be a hell of a lot more than that…that’s less than like one state…


The bad news? They’re still losing customers. The future of Florida is not “money”…it appears to be “insurance defaults” and possibly “measles outbreaks”…

But we’ll see. I don’t disagree with your assessment on tactics. And it goes to what I was trying to say. The future is NOT expansion to fit people comfortably.
It’s “resource scarcity” to drive prices up. They’ve been doing it for 15 years it doesn’t seem to have registered with all. Dust is powerful stuff.

The only quibble I have is “conversion of rack to dvc in prime locations”

Conversion? Absolutely.
Prime locations? No…the last few have included some dogs already
 

Big_Shakalaka

Well-Known Member
Nope

Not “belief” at all. The core travel market has operated on a 7 day “cap” in the us…more or less
Its time…it’s commitments…its money…its a mixture of all that and other factors…

Disney has KNOWN this…with data…since 1999. Notice how they haven’t actually added footprint really at all since then?

Avatar and downtown. They also closed River country, discovery island, essentially wide world as an “attraction” and a lot of the hotel recreation options since.

This all accidental?
I don't want to go down an American society rabbit hole, but most jobs in America suck at giving vacation time, at least in the first 1-5 of employment at an organization. So anything over a week, for a lot of people means over half of their vacation allotment for the year. I think a LOT of Americans view 7 days as the limit.
 

JoeCamel

Well-Known Member
I don't want to go down an American society rabbit hole, but most jobs in America suck at giving vacation time, at least in the first 1-5 of employment at an organization. So anything over a week, for a lot of people means over half of their vacation allotment for the year. I think a LOT of Americans view 7 days as the limit.
IT is the reality so Dis works with it as the norm. Only way to plan for
 

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
I don't want to go down an American society rabbit hole, but most jobs in America suck at giving vacation time, at least in the first 1-5 of employment at an organization. So anything over a week, for a lot of people means over half of their vacation allotment for the year. I think a LOT of Americans view 7 days as the limit.
✅ correct

It’s just the way it is.
We have been tuned to “ya get a week…if you’re lucky” for travel.

The aggregate length of stay average went up less than one day when DAK opened…which kinda took them by surprise. It’s kinda the “glass ceiling” for American travel. And that is still the bulk of the foot traffic you’ll get to Orlando
 

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
Bob’s comment about “wanting fewer guests” was off-script, off-the-cuff and he never, at any time, has wanted fewer guests in the hotels and parks spending money.
It was an antithetical and stupid comment that doesn’t hold water for a second.

Why would a publicly traded company - especially one that has been dependent on a cable tv business that was starting to collapse - EVER want less business?

They wouldn’t is the answer

“They wanted to make more money off less people…”

Don’t be stupid…every public company since the beginning of time is required to make MORE money off MORE people. There isn’t a day off.

They are in a rush to ship out cruise ships right now…which will increase the supply while lowering the demand and price. Now why? They had a sweet deal going with few ships…

Because they need to fill the opening void as parks slow. Cause MORE!!!
 

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
You sure you're reading the chart right? The 2017 data I opened was reporting in THOUSANDs

For 2017, reporting 6,050 - but that is 6.05 MILLION households.
And yet…as speculated…the Mickey spinners are down somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 people per year since their highest point in Orlando

And it sure as hell isn’t “they want less people”
 

TheMaxRebo

Well-Known Member
Bob’s comment about “wanting fewer guests” was off-script, off-the-cuff and he never, at any time, has wanted fewer guests in the hotels and parks spending money.

I don't think they ever wanted fewer total people coming to the parks but they did know those very peak times were getting to the point that the crowds were causing negative guest reactions and so they wanted to spread the crowds out more.

Ideally the most crowded times be like 10% lower but then the slower times be 20% high or whatever
 

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